Confused? Well, Lord love us all, who isn’t confused? The Harrisburg Seven trial looks more and more like the greatest federal fizzle of recent years.
Chief Prosecutor William Lynch avows a certain satisfaction because guilty verdicts were returned in seven out of the ten counts in the indictment, and “seven out of ten isn’t bad.” But those seven counts were all concerned with smuggling those silly letters. The big ones, the conspiracy charge, the blowing up of tunnels, the purloining of Henry Kissinger, all wound up with a hung jury: ten to two for acquittal, which is a pretty big point spread. Legally, what you are left with is a middle-aged priest and a nun who sneaked correspondence to each other, most of it via a convict whom Father Phil regarded as “one of our best people,” but who was an FBI informant. This is not nice conduct, but if that’s all there was, it is a big, expensive letdown: something like being promised the apocalypse and winding up with a leaky basement.
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